


Private Party

by Allthecircles



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Endgame Tony meets post-portal Tony, Gen, I blame Astor20, Let me know if you want more of this, Protective Tony Stark, That did not happen., This was supposed to be a one shot., Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Gets a Hug, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Meets Tony Stark, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark and Tony Stark, Whose gonna love Tony like Tony loves Tony?, and all of you really, will add characters and tags as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:53:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23953384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allthecircles/pseuds/Allthecircles
Summary: Endgame Tony figures out the equation to go back and, billionaire genius that he is, replicates the Pym particles and the time machine and goes back in time. Much hand-wavy science. He goes back to a specific date, two days after Loki's invasion, when Tony is sitting in the yet-to-be-repaired lounge debating many choices. 2014-Tony and Endgame Tony put their heads together to figure out how to bet Thanos, avoid the Avengers and maybe find someone (someones?) to love them both.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	Private Party

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Astor20](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astor20/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Gift of Hindsight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12383385) by [silver_drip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_drip/pseuds/silver_drip). 



> Inspired by a prompt by Astor20:  
> Sometime after Infinity War or close to it or after Endgame Tony Stark goes back in time (either deliberately or some random accident your choice) and stays there with past!Tony Stark. Future Tony helps him to prepare for Thanos and helps him getting involved with Shield/Hydra shady business. Also avoid the Avengers and there abuse and gaslighting and betrayals. (Because I’m still salty about basically everything). Both Tonys get an actual team that appreciates them. Also real friends and family. Jarvis also lives with Friday too. And they both live happily ever after, after they squish that giant grape.  
> While there doesn’t necessarily need to be bashing I would appreciate if there wasn’t a whole lot of interaction between the Tonys and users than what’s necessary for plot purposes. And I would hope the Tonys would find someone to treat them right and love them completely even if that’s only each other lol!  
> But doesn’t need to have a romantic relationship either. So if someone who can actually write would make this a story I would really appreciate it! Thank you.  
> Features elements from A Gift of Hindsight by silver_drip. Go read it!

"I remember this."

He stared out at the city through the pane next to the window he'd been thrown out of while the other Tony whipped his head around to stare. His fifty-three year old neck would have probably snapped, but this Tony is younger, less fragile, 39 and in much better physical health than he is now. He shoves shaking hands into the pockets of his slacks, pretending to look around while the wheels churn behind his eyes across the room. 

Tony sat on the bar, feet dangling over the edge of the Loki-crater, and stared. There, standing 7 feet 3 inches in front of the hallway that led to his bedroom, was _himself_ , but _not_ himself. He wasn't an idiot, and frankly with all the shit he'd seen in the last 72 hours this didn't surprise him, and so he knew that what he was looking at was another version of himself, even with all the differences he could see from here. The question was...

"Alternate universe or future?"

He smiled. Of course he'd go for the jugular. There was no need to word vomit and irritate the listener when they could keep up with you, when they were _yourself_. "Future."

"Shit." Tony stared. Mostly because there was a lot in those two words, including the bright flashing undercurrent of 'the future is bad!', so, so much to unpack and digest that his brain had actually failed to come up with a question to ask there were just so many, but also a distant corner of his brain was fangirling over the fact the _he actually? got. HOTTER???_ which, wasn't even remotely important in the grand scheme of things, but if he was sticking around - oh.

"How long you here for?" He'd need a room and ID if it was more than a day, and that would be fairly easy to set up - 

"It was a one way trip, _Tonin._ "

And wow, did that answer about half of the suspicions he didn't even notice crowding around the back of his head. He, they, were six when they decided they needed their own name for themself. Tony'd realized early on that depending on who called him what, he could tell what they wanted from him. Anthony, Antonio, boy, bambino, young sir, Tony, the Stark prodigy, they all meant different things and he'd decided, in a fit of preternatural clarity as he tied his shoes one morning, that if he wanted to survive and not always be who other people wanted him to be, he had to know who he was. And to six-year-old Tony, that meant giving himself a name only he knew. 

Using the name right then had been a deliberate choice. Both because it had the handy effect of verifying his identity, because he'd never referred to himself by their name out loud, ever, and to remind Tony of why they came up with it in the first place, and possibly to hint at why he'd come all this way. 

And apparently it worked. Out of the corner of his eye as he pretended to examine the ceiling, actually noting for the first time that there hadn't been any damage to it, oddly enough, as Tony hopped off the counter, away from the edge of the Loki-crater, and ambled over to him. The room had been cleared of the furniture and accessories that had been there, the undamaged pieces being donated after being scanned by SHIELD, he knew. Less because Tony was a guy who replaced but didn't waste, and more because like hell he'd let anything SHIELD had their sticky little hands on back into his tower. The files Coulson had given him three nights before today, Tony had shipped off to SHIELD with all the bugs he had found in his tower so far. There were more, and he'd have to help his counterpart get them out as quickly as possible. 

Tony stood a few feet away from him, trying to catch his eye. He obliged, catching the other man's eyes' slight widening of surprise. He smirked. Sure, they looked pretty much identical at first glance, but he was a little over a decade older, and he _knew_ he looked his age. He had never been kind to his body and as he got older the effects showed out. He was nowhere near as gaunt as he'd been when Carol had rescued he and Nebula, but he hadn't exactly been stuffing himself in the aftermath of the Snap, either. On top of that, he knew he looked...different. Not sad, not broken, but he'd lost the light and curiosity he could see burning behind his younger self's eyes. Pepper had commented on it often. He knew it was a shock. 

Tony felt his mind processing like it'd never processed before. Up close, his future self looked _haggard_. There was no spark behind his eyes, and Tony knew that they'd always had a spark, Jarvis had called it a spark, and to not see it in his own, albeit older, face _shook him_. That, and this Tony had none of the muscle mass he'd worked so hard to build up, because there was no Iron Man if he couldn't manage to move the suit, and the complete lack of the telltale light behind the older Stark's nearly see-through white dress shirt with the first three buttons undone like some weird 80's bachelor meant that this Tony wasn't Iron Man and all of a sudden Tony wanted to sit down. So he did. Hard. His tailbone and all of his very bruised body protested, and he hid a wince and he shifted, trying to get comfortable. "How much can you tell me?" That wobble in his voice? Perfectly valid, given the circumstances. 

He watched as his younger self got comfortable on the floor, crossing his legs a bit gingerly - he remembered the whole back of his body had been a mottled patchwork of bruises from being slammed into the ground after Hulk saved him - before he answered. "Everything. I intend to write myself out of existence." Tony frowned, like he knew he would.

"That's not how it works, though. You're not an anomaly, your existence in a constant in the universe from the moment you are. You're not going to just vanish - "

"I know. That timeline is going to continue on to it's completion, I know." He smirked. "Got you."

Tony snorted. "Jerk." Of course he would mess with him when his brain was still processing. "There is still something I need to ask you, though."

Older-him shrugged. "No you don't. We had a crush on Ms. Frizzle."

Tony felt himself blush. "We are never to speak of this again."

He smirked. "Anything else you want to think up to verify my identity?"

Tony blushed darker, getting to his feet. "No, I'm good, thanks."

"You sure? What about that one dream you had about Rhodey and - "

"Oh my _god_ that was _one time_."

He laughed, more because the madness of the situation was catching up with him than because teasing himself was actually that funny. He watched Tony shuffle a few feet closer, still blushing red, before realization hit him. "Come here, Tonin."

  
Tony's eyes moved on their own accord, since he was deliberately _not_ looking at his older self and _not_ thinking about what he wanted in that moment, but he saw all the same, Older-him open his arms and hold them out to him and the ten-year-old Tony, who'd decided that if he ever got a chance to hug himself he'd _take it_ , launched across the short space and held on. 

Tony's arms wrapped around his torso, head falling against his shoulder and he _squeezed_ , drawing the younger man closer in a hold he knew had to be painful but it didn't matter because Tony _squeezed back_ , tight and close and _close_ because he knew how he wanted to be held, knew how they'd dreamed of being _squished_ because no one wanted to hold them, only Rhodey had come close and they'd always _needed_ too much to be comfortable asking for it but here, in this embrace they didn't have to think, didn't have to ask. Noses found necks, breathed in then out, warm air trapped between them fanning out against their chests, hands stroked down backs and then they were swaying, softly, gently from side to side and he almost cried, not quite burying a sob in the crook of Tony's neck as the younger did the same. It was just so good to be _held_ , to be held without having to worry about having to give something in return or wonder what the other person was going to ask for. Just held, with arms as tight around him as his were around them, equal and steady and _good_ and he swore, _he swore_ that he would protect this. Tony rubbed his forehead up under his chin, his beard catching in the other man's hair and _god_ he'd wanted to do that with Howard since he was little, just burrow himself into the man's embrace just once but the one time he'd tried he'd been slapped - _Stark men are made of iron!_ \- and sent off to Maria and he raked his fingers through Tony's hair down at the nape where he'd always wanted someone to put their hands and he would do _anything_ to protect this, protect him, protect _himself_ from being ruined by underhanded organizations with hidden agendas and hypocritical super-soldiers and people who only valued him for his money and his tech and it just wasn't going to happen. Never. 

They stayed like that for ages, minutes or hours, Tony didn't know or care, arms tight around his older self, one of the man's hands splayed against a bruise at the center of his back, the other lazily scratching at the spot at the back of his head like he'd always wanted someone to do, idly swaying back and forth. A good portion of Older-Tony's shirt was damp because he just didn't realize how much he'd needed this, needed to be held close like he actually mattered, and there had been tears but he didn't even mind, didn't even think about trying to hide them. This being held thing? Perfect. There was always something going on with Pepper that she never tried, even after sex. Either he didn't sleep enough or eat enough to appease her or he needed a shower and she refused to touch him or she was about to fly out to somewhere and just didn't have the time. Rhodey had held him that one time when Obie had called him at MIT to tell him his parent's had died, and it had been nice, in a firm, _'I'm gonna hold you here until you don't look like you're going to fly apart anymore'_ kind of way, but it wasn't _this_. This was perfect, hard and sure and _tactile_ in a way Rhodey had never been, not an inch of space between them anywhere, he was pretty sure even their junk was touching but that was fine because this was _him_ , he was literally hugging _himself_ and that was fine because he loved himself, didn't always act like it, but he did, he had to, because he'd come back from the future to help him or warn him or whatever. So this hug was perfectly normal, and he'd enjoy it as long as it lasted. He wouldn't even try to make the self-love joke pittering at the edge of his mindscape. Not now, at least.

"I guess we still have to talk?" He mumbled against the shoulder supporting his head. He ignored the knee-jerk reaction to not sound so young and vulnerable, to put distance between them, to hide how much he _didn't want to move_. The arm around him tightened. 

"We do. When you're ready." He tugged the younger one closer, the arc reactor sending a low hum through his chest. His eyes slid shut at the sensation; hadn't felt that in a while. "Might as well do it here. We'll need the alcohol." And all of a sudden he could feel the shift coming, Tony's brain revving up to full speed in the head against his shoulder. The younger man's fingers began tapping against his back, and he smiled into the brown curls that really needed a wash. 

"All of it?" Tony's voice managed to hide a good deal of the trepidation he felt. Older him could have said _a drink_ or _some_ alcohol. The fact that he didn't meant there was a lot more to this story to process than he'd originally guessed at. Which wasn't reassuring. 

"All of it. You're also going to need to stock up."

  
"Shit." Nobody really understood, but Tony used alcohol to slow his mind down. Sure, he could still get drunk, but his tolerance level was a bit higher than the average person's because he actually burned through his drinks pretty quickly. It was one of the downsides to his genius, and to be honest he kind of suspected, but didn't have the balls to check, that it may actually be a mutation, that his brain could actually move so fast that it could lose him. He'd spent a week in a processing overload only once, and had woken up on Obie's couch with no recollection of how he'd gotten there and no desire to repeat the experience. But... "I'd been thinking about stopping."

"I know, and we'll look at some alternatives, but for this conversation, we're going to need it."

And something about that little word, that little 'we', eased the tiny furl of anxiety he hadn't realized had flared in his belly. He wasn't alone. This wasn't someone who was going to dump their shit on him and leave him to figure it out. This was him. They would face whatever was to come together. The way it should be. 

"Okay." Another squeeze, and Tony tried to press himself closer to the one holding him. It didn't work, but it was a nice try. "Okay."


End file.
